Military museums seek relevance in new age

WASHINGTON, May 25 (UPI) -- Military museums across the United States are suffering this Memorial Day weekend as they try to compete with high-tech entertainment options, experts say.

Professionals in the field have long preferred solemnity and history lessons over entertainment values, and that is coming back to haunt many of the 90 such facilities in the United States, The Washington Post reported Sunday, citing the shopworn state of the National Museum of the United States Navy as an example.

There, it said, the faded dress coat of Adm. George Dewey and the chipped paint of an anti-aircraft gun stand in sharp contrast to the nearby National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, Va., which the newspaper says includes a sophisticated sound and light experience.

"Museum professionals no longer think of 'attraction' as a dirty word," Lin Ezell, director of the Marine Corps museum, told the Post. "The amusement parks, the Disneys, the Epcots have taken this to a high level of art and science."

Younger museum-goers want authenticity as well as flash, Ford Bell, president of the American Association of Museums, told the newspaper.

"They don't want to stand on a fake battlefield," he said. "They want to stand on the real battlefield where soldiers bled and died."